[Macau International Film Festival Viewing] This year coincides with the last year of the 2010s. This month, major film magazines and website media have selected the best films in the past ten years. Among them, Terrence Malick’s Palme d’Or film "Life "The Tree" has been selected by many film critics as the best of the decade, and its combination of poetic pictures and grand themes is impressive. What is pleasantly surprised is that after eight years, Malik returned to the Cannes competition again this year, presenting a touching and thought-provoking work "The Hidden Life" with the theme of World War II. I was fortunate enough to enjoy this masterpiece at the Macau International Film Festival earlier this month. Undeniably, this is a film that challenges the limits of the audience. Malik used three long and poetic hours to tell a simple story. A villager living in an Austrian mountain village refused to fight for Nazi Germany during World War II and was eventually sentenced to death.
Malik's previous works have been exploring and questioning various "meanings": "The Tree of Life" is looking for the meaning of life and history, "To the Wonderland" attempts to explore the eternity of love, and "The Knights of the Holy Grail" is asking about the lives of stars. The truth. If these works are revolving around the illusory meaning and make people unable to invest, then this new work is definitely a return to the historical and realistic level, immediately closing the distance with the audience, with a strong emotional rendering power. This adaptation of a real-life work is like the director’s continuation of the anti-war theme of "The Thin Red Line" that the director won the Berlin Golden Bear Award. In the equally poetic "Thin Red Line", a team of American infantry soldiers joins in The battlefield in the South Pacific uses the soldiers' subjective stream of consciousness and inner monologue to insinuate the truest human nature in the war. In this new film, it also describes a distinctive "soldier" who refuses to follow the trend and submits to the Nazi rule to join the fight, but listens to and follows a firm belief that justice and conscience make him brave to face death without being indifferent. Cringe.
However, unlike the common World War II themes, this new work does not have any frontal depictions of war, no battlefields of beacon smoke, no brutal Nazi concentration camps, and no thrilling scenes of rescue or escape, but undoubtedly, This is still an out-and-out anti-war film. The director is committed to creating an idyllic living environment. The hero, his wife and children live a carefree life in this paradise. In the first half, spend a lot of time describing this "Garden of Eden": the mountains, waterfalls, and green grass give a deep impression. The director's intentional portrayal of the natural environment and family life secretly echoes the protagonist's inner goodness and integrity, and the origin of his firm beliefs. On the other hand, it seems to be questioning the ravages and destruction of the "Garden of Eden" by humans' brutal and cruel behavior (war). .
Turning to the second part of the film, the narrative has obviously become heavier and heavier. The protagonist is forced to participate in military training organized by the local organization. Not long after the training is over, he receives a notice of enlistment from the Nazi Empire, and then tells of him in prison. Waiting for trial and finally ushered in the cruel death penalty. In this part, the director focuses more on the conflict between the belief and religion of the hero, which makes people think about the nature of religion. Churches and priests often represent God's judgment on human justice, but the church at that time has been helplessly controlled by the Nazis and has become an accomplice in the service of totalitarian ideology, constantly instilling wrong ideas into the people. In the end, the actor did not listen to the persuasion of the priest and bishop, and has always firmly followed his beliefs and refused to take an oath for the Nazis. From this perspective, the film goes beyond the traditional anti-war and anti-Nazi themes, and rises to a more profound exploration of beliefs, reminiscent of the religious works of director Dreyer.
Terrence Malik, as an author and director who focuses on personal style expression, this time, as always, uses the signature short focal length and wide-angle lens to shoot slightly distorted images of people, and the smooth editing and the attempt to separate sound and picture (poetic) The silent reading of letters and inner monologues) provide ample space for the expression of the characters’ inner dramas, and at the same time give the audience a very real sense of "immersion". This may be the reason why the film is crying in the second half of the film. In the past ten years, Malik has given the audience the impression that he is a "poet" who is good at audiovisual images, but he rarely focuses on a "director" who focuses on narrative. However, this new work has effectively responded to the disdain and suspicion of the public. More importantly, the anti-totalitarian consciousness brought out by the film is thought-provoking. Regardless of whether this is the director’s response to the current reality, this film undoubtedly has a profound reflection on reality. Significance: One's faith and conscience always have the power to fight totalitarianism.
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